Aerosols must be considered by climate models - environmentalresearchweb

Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York agrees that any effect is likely to be small compared to that from large volcanoes and intrinsic climate variability such as El Niño events and also emphasizes the difficulty of incorporating the contribution of volcanic aerosols into future climate projections. "We can either assume no volcanoes, or make some scenario based on the 20th century or on a random number generator, "he says. "Both have been tried, but neither is satisfactory because the real world volcanoes are not going to cooperate!"

Greg Combet to send out carbon tax facts to households in $4m letter drop | The Australian

EVERY Australian household will receive a brochure on the proposed carbon tax under a $4 million taxpayer-funded letter drop.

Climate Change Minister Greg Combet announced the move today as he unveiled a legislative exposure draft on the tax, which will lock in an 80 per cent cut to carbon emissions by 2050.

The letter drop was immediately branded "junk mail" by the opposition.

Could you use the internet to heat your house? | Grist

Microsoft is researching whether they can keep servers in residential houses, thus saving the company money on cooling and saving the residents money on heating. This would only work in the winter, but it's always winter somewhere, right? (At least for now.)

This plan is not without its pitfalls. For starters, users might not feel super-secure about having their data live in some furnace room in suburbia.